D-DAY MEMORIES: NORMANDY veteran Geoff Foulkes will be seeing the French beaches again this summer for the first time since 1944.

Mr Foulkes, 85, of Dunnington Road, Wootton Bassett, said: "The last time I saw those beaches was over the side of a troop ship with shrapnel from shells falling all around us."

He was in France was as a 25 year-old a soldier in the Royal Army Service Corps (since renamed the Royal Logistics Corps).

He said: "Our job was to keep all the troops supplied with ammunition, food, transport and the like, so we came over the day after the first landings.

"There was still a lot of shellfire when we got there and we had to drive the boats as far up the beech as they would go and then start unloading the lorries and jeeps and supplies in to the see, all the time with shells exploding overhead."

His war started in September 1939, when he joined up just weeks after his 21st birthday and was sent to France, ending up in the retreat from Dunkirk.

He said: "Dunkirk was such chaos, people talk about the miracle of Dunkirk, but I think the real miracle was that anyone got away from there alive.

"I managed to get on to a troop ship, but as soon as we left the harbour the Stukkas came over and bombed it and it started to sink.

"Fortunately for me there was a little trawler leaving harbour alongside us, and so I just jumped on to that.

"I jumped about 20ft down on to the desk, I was lucky not the break my neck but all I ended up with was a sprained ankle.'

"There were a lot of others not so lucky, my unit left with 300 people and only around 200 made it back. But at least when I went back for the Normandy landings I knew the way."

He spent two years planning the landings. He said: "It was so hush hush that I wasn't even allowed to tell my family where I was based.

"It was a massive operation but it went lick clockwork once troops started landing, all the planning was worth it.''

See this week's 4 page 60th Anniversary of D-Day special in the Gazette & Herald